Soon there were innumerable lights all over the country on all the shores of the bay, from top to bottom of the mountains; myriads of glowing fires shone out in the darkness, conveying the impression of a vast capital rising around us in one bewildering amphitheatre.

Beneath, in the silent waters, another town, also illuminated, seemed to descend into the depths of the abyss.

The night was balmy, pure, delicious; the atmosphere laden with the perfume of flowers came wafted to us from the mountains.

From the tea-houses and other nocturnal resorts, the sound of guitars reached our ears, seeming in the distance the sweetest of music.
And the whirr of the cicalas--which, in Japan, is one of the continuous noises of life, and which in a few days we shall no longer even be aware of, so completely is it the background and foundation of all other terrestrial sounds--was sonorous, incessant, softly monotonous, like the murmur of a waterfall..